David cameron

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

Let’s refocus the Panama story on the bad stuff that really matters

From our UK edition

There were moments last week when I was ready to give up journalism and retrain in a less unsavoury profession — chiropody, perhaps. It might have been Jon Snow’s bushwhacking of arts minister Ed Vaizey on the subject of the prime minister’s tax affairs, or Snow’s colleague Cathy Newman shrieking questions about offshore companies at Boris Johnson as she chased him in the street. Or one of dozens of reports and articles oozing malice, self--righteousness, hypocrisy and wilful ignorance of the distinction between tax planning as practised by anyone with a sense of obligation to provide for their family and the dirty business of hiding ill-gotten gains.

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

PMQs Sketch: Cameron’s far-sighted statesmanship

From our UK edition

A vandal smashing a window and calling it air conditioning. A mother marrying her son and declaring it a lesson in advanced sexual morality. A shoplifter caught with a chicken up his jumper and congratulating the store detectives on their commitment to property rights. That’s how David Cameron ducked the tax-abuse row at PMQs today. He basked in hypocrisy. He wallowed in smugness. He luxuriated in panic measures and called them far-sighted statesmanship. He chose to posture as the brilliant leader of a brilliant government whose brilliant new policy is to rip down the cloaks of secrecy that protect Britain’s tax-dodge paradises overseas. And he contrasted his zeal with the useless Labour party which, as he gloated several times, did nothing for 13 years.

Charles Moore

Justin Welby could teach David Cameron a thing or two about PR

From our UK edition

I don’t think there is a Royal College of Public Relations, but if there were, it should teach a course based on a comparison between two stories last week. One concerned the Prime Minister and the other the Archbishop of Canterbury. Both arose from the paternity of the principals and, in both cases, the principals had not done anything wrong. Yet there the similarities end. David Cameron, and those working for him, spent the best part of a week fending off and then changing a story they found embarrassing. Justin Welby, and his much smaller staff, confirmed the truth of a potentially much more painful story in one go, bravely and clearly.

Martin Vander Weyer

Forget David Cameron – I want to know about Wayne Rooney’s tax return

From our UK edition

While we’re on the subject of taxes, what about footballers? That’s a question often put up by bankers accused of being overpaid, but the comparison works as well with politicians. Cameron’s tenure at the top has coincided with that of Wayne Rooney, a role model for millions who is said to earn more in a week than the Prime Minister earns in a year: Cameron’s tax rate turns out to be 38 per cent, but what’s Wayne’s? More broadly, the annual wage bill for the Premier League is £1.9 billion. Two thirds of the players, including most of the highest paid, are foreign. A survey for 2013–14 found players earning an average of £2.

Monday

Tom Goodenough

Today in audio: PM branded ‘dodgy Dave’ as tax row rumbles on

From our UK edition

David Cameron has been defending himself in the Commons following the publication of his tax return. He said he found some of the comments about his father 'deeply hurtful'. He also held his hands up for not responding to criticism sooner following last week's Panama papers controversy: One of the more personal jibes thrown at him in the chamber came from Dennis Skinner, who branded the PM 'dodgy Dave' in a remark which got him booted out of the Commons: Jeremy Corbyn was more measured in his response to David Cameron, but he still used the debate to say there was 'one rule for the super-rich and another for the rest': Whilst George Osborne - who along with the Labour leader also released his tax return today - took the opportunity to lash out at the opposition.

James Forsyth

Has David Cameron’s tax debacle united the Tories?

From our UK edition

Yet again, David Cameron has reason to be grateful for the quality of the opposition facing him. First of all, Jeremy Corbyn took until Cameron’s statement to release his own tax return, meaning that journalists were studying that as much as his response in the House of Commons. Second, Corbyn’s own response was long on verbiage but failed to ask any difficult questions of Cameron. Finally, Dennis Skinner had John Bercow order him from the chamber for refusing to withdraw his use of the word ‘dodgy’ about Cameron, which rather reinforced the point that the case against Cameron is long on name-calling and short on specifics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Steerpike

Watch: Dennis Skinner ejected from Commons over ‘dodgy Dave’ insult

From our UK edition

This afternoon David Cameron has had to face the music in the Commons over his shares in his father's offshore fund. While he received a lukewarm response from his own party, the most hostile response came from the Beast of Bolsover. After Cameron gave an address on his tax affairs, Dennis Skinner angrily responded by calling the Prime Minister 'dodgy Dave': 'At the time when he was dividing the nation between striders and scroungers, I asked him a very important question about the windfall he received when he wrote off the mortgage of the premises in Notting Hill, and I said he didn't write off the mortgage of the one the taxpayers were helping to pay for at Oxford. I didn't receive a proper answer then. Maybe dodgy Dave will answer it now.

Tom Goodenough

Osborne and Corbyn publish their tax returns – but are they any more interesting than the PMs?

From our UK edition

George Osborne and Jeremy Corbyn have now both followed in the Prime Minister's footsteps by publishing details of their tax returns. As James Forsyth said on our Spectator podcast earlier today, it was just a matter of time before the Chancellor and Labour leader bowed down to pressure. But what do the two documents actually tell us? The simple answer is that Osborne and Corbyn's tax returns make for even less interesting reading than David Cameron's. Properly speaking, Osborne's isn't even a tax return at all but rather a summary of the main bits. It shows his earnings as Chancellor; it also appears to show that he isn't putting any money in an Isa if the £3 in interest he earned last year is anything to go by.

Tom Goodenough

The Coffee House podcast: David Cameron’s tax headache

From our UK edition

David Cameron has bowed down to pressure by publishing his tax return and now the Chancellor has done the same. But where will the calls for financial transparency end? And how did this issue blow up into such a big political row? Spectator editor Fraser Nelson joins Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth to talk about the Prime Minister's tax headache. Speaking on the podcast, James Forsyth says the whole topic shows Downing Street is so fixated on Europe that it has taken an eye off the ball. He tells Fraser: 'I think what is going on is this: Europe is totally and utterly distracting Downing Street from everything else. This referendum means Downing Street can't think about anything else and it can't think straight: it is seeing conspiracies in the shadows everywhere'.

Steerpike

Has Jeremy Corbyn lost his tax return?

From our UK edition

Oh dear. Although Jeremy Corbyn spent the best part of last week calling on David Cameron to publish his tax return, the Labour leader appears to be struggling to follow his own advice. Despite Corbyn promising to publish his tax return last Tuesday, the document is yet to see the light of day. Rather than a tax evasion conspiracy, it's thought that Corbyn simply can't find it; with some outlets reporting that he has had to ask HMRC to send him a copy.  However, the Leader's Office dispute this -- they insist that it will be published soon.

Isabel Hardman

Cameron’s handling of the tax row means it won’t go away any time soon

From our UK edition

David Cameron will give a statement in the Commons addressing the row about his tax arrangements, with George Osborne expected to publish his own tax return in the coming days too. That the Prime Minister has had to prepare a statement for MPs so that he can avoid being hauled to the Commons by Labour with an urgent question shows both how serious this row is for Cameron, but also how he is trying to compensate for being unprepared last week. He had clearly underestimated how potent the revelations in the Panama Papers would be, thinking that they could be dismissed with a mere line about this being a ‘private matter’. The bitty statements and changes of tack that came over the following days shows that no-one in Downing Street really thought Cameron was in any danger.

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

David Cameron’s tax returns tell us nothing. So why did he publish them?

From our UK edition

It’s just as well that David Cameron abandoned his career in public relations because he seems to be comically (or, if you’re a journalist, deliciously) bad at crisis management. He has done absolutely nothing wrong, but is carrying on as if he’s Ken Dodd in 1989 - except Dodd handled it all more deftly. The Prime Minister has now released six years of his tax returns, which is odd because no one is asking questions about his income over the last six years. But still, he wants to tell us about the £100k annual rent he's getting form his Notting Hill flat and the £3,052 of bank interest (which suggests a balance of about £150k). And the other tax returns show about £200k of income since becoming PM.

Friday

Steerpike

Lily Allen in a spin over David Cameron’s offshore trust stake

From our UK edition

Oh dear. David Cameron's bad day just got worse. After he admitted to previously owning shares in his father's offshore fund, he has faced calls to resign. Now Lily Allen has promised to pay him a visit. The Smile singer says she will be heading to No.10  tomorrow to take part in a protest calling for Cameron to resign. The news will no doubt come as a blow to the Prime Minister given that he previously claimed Allen's music was unsuitable listening material for his children. Making clear her opposition to Cameron, Allen claimed on Twitter that he has been 'stealing' from the public and needs to resign: https://twitter.com/lilyallen/status/718349311692709889 Alas Allen has failed to offer up any evidence to back up her claim.

Fraser Nelson

David Cameron is guilty of bad spin – and nothing more

From our UK edition

At last! We can now see why David Cameron tried to keep this quiet. He sold his shares in January 2010 – just as the recovery was starting. What a dunce! His £31,500 would be worth a lot more by now if he’d held, and diversified his portfolio. So can you trust him with the nation’s finances? And this, as far as I can make out, is the limit of the scandal. All else is spin and smear. The spin, of course, matters. The Prime Minister has behaved as if he had something to hide when he didn’t. His carefully-worded highly-specific non-denial denials (‘In terms of my own financial affairs, I own no shares…’) were the equivalent of screaming ‘ATTENTION JOURNALISTS!!! HIDDEN STORY!!! LET THE GAME BEGIN!

Isabel Hardman

The government has returned to a period of omnishambles

From our UK edition

You can tell a lot about how a party’s press operation thinks things are going from who it sends out to do its dirty work on the airwaves. Yesterday the Conservatives sent Michael Fallon out to defend the Government’s £9m pro-EU leaflet, which suggested that they knew it was going to be controversial and would need defending by someone skilled at sticking to the line, even when the line is totally untenable and difficult to defend. Today, Nick Boles popped up on Radio 4 to defend David Cameron’s eventual admission that he had indeed made money from the offshore fund set up by his father.

Tom Goodenough

‘Cameron comes clean’: Newspapers savage PM after offshore tax confession

From our UK edition

This morning's newspapers were never going to make enjoyable reading for the Prime Minister following his admission yesterday that he owned shares in an offshore trust. But David Cameron may still not have been quite prepared for the focus with which the headlines go after him. He has experienced bad newspaper headlines before, of course, but this is the first time the attacks have focused so specifically on him, rather than on a policy introduced by the Government. It's hard to feel sorry for Cameron, though. By dragging the story out with statements that raised more questions than they answered, he only has himself to blame for whipping this up into the media storm which we see on today's front pages.

Thursday

Toby Young

A big hand for the two-faced tax hacks

From our UK edition

Something odd happened at the Guardian after the paper’s editorial staff were basking in the glow of their just-published splash about the Panama papers. They were understandably excited, having sat on the revelations for months, and were about to put flesh on the bones of the stories that had broken on Sunday evening about the elaborate tax-avoidance schemes of assorted Tory bigwigs. The Guardian was one of 107 media organisations that had been secretly going through the cache of 11.5 million documents stolen from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca and these were the golden nuggets: disclosures guaranteed to cause the government maximum embarrassment and — an added bonus — give a much-needed boost to Jeremy Corbyn.

The Spectator

The road to Panama

From our UK edition

The 11 million documents leaked from Panama lawyers Mossack Fonseca tell us much that we know already. It’s hardly news that the Central American state is a popular destination for those who dislike paying tax. But to obsess about this aspect of the story, as so many did this week, would be to miss the most striking discovery, which is just how many politicians and government officials have been using Panama to disguise their extraordinary wealth. Few were under any illusions about Vladimir Putin being a good and faithful public servant, yet it comes as a surprise that he appears to have a personal fortune that would have made the tsars look like paupers.

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron defends £9m spend on EU leaflets

From our UK edition

David Cameron has defended the £9m government leaflet promoting the EU as ‘money well spent’ and ‘necessary’, as the Tory party erupts into fury once again. What’s interesting about this new row - over a leaflet sent to all homes which sets out ‘why the Government believes that voting to remain in the European Union is the best decision for the UK’ - is that it has incensed not just those usual suspects who are annoyed that the Remain side already has a natural advantage in the referendum campaign in that it can wheel out the Prime Minister for guaranteed media attention whenever it likes.

Steerpike

David Cameron claims he watches Glastonbury at home by a warm fire… in June

From our UK edition

Today David Cameron is trying to win the youth vote in the upcoming EU referendum. To do this, he has given a speech to students at Exeter University -- claiming that young people will be be hit hardest in the event of Brexit. Taking questions from the audience after his speech, one student pointed out that it may be difficult for many youngsters to vote given that the referendum clashes with Glastonbury. Answering the question, Cameron attempted to get the crowd on side by confessing that he too loves the music festival. However, rather than attend the lively festivities, he makes sure he watches it 'at home in front of a warm fire'. However, Mr S is slightly suspicious of Cameron's claim. After all, Glastonbury takes place in the summer.